The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Nina Curnew

"I went into service when I was 12 years old. I got $8.00 a month"

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There were 13 of us – mom, dad, and 11 children. Murdock, Christian, Dora, John, Susanna (Susie), Mable, Freda, Nina (me), Margaret, Margie, Maxine, and Lige – he died when he was a baby. My parents were Beatrice (Mulley) and Johnny Slade.

I suppose the role of women were different from the role of men. The men always had their own work. In our family, dad was gone because he was a miner in the mines. He worked in Sydney mines for years and he worked in Buchans mines. So he was mostly gone. The first couple of children (Susie and John) were born up in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. Mom, she always had boarders and she kept boarders to work in the woods with Dad and them. I don't know that much about up there except there were two children born up there.

I suppose the first job I had was out to Clarke's Store. No, not really. I went out in service when I was 12 years old. When I'd get out of school, I would go into service. At that time it was housework. When I was out in service, I was only 12 years old. We were raised up, I suppose, middle class people.

My older sisters, they had it a little rougher them I did because at the time I was growing up we were a little better off. When we got of age we had to go out and do what we could for ourselves. I worked for $8.00 a month. And that was work. I did the cleaning. I did washing in the washtub, the ironing and if the kitchen wanted cleaning or anything needed to be cleaned, I did that, too. I know when I worked at the Power House on time and I got $8.00 a month and every morning I would come up here to the mail, sometimes waist deep with snow – no tractors or nothing to do the roads then. So we really worked for our money. Then we'd go to school in between.

At the age of 16 I went to Clarke's Store to work. I got $20.00 a month. It was a little better at that time. My husband worked there, too. I would go to work in the morning, and be back for my children's dinner and I'd get so much done. I'd prepare something for their dinner and I'd go back again in the evening and I'd be back again before they got out of school. And I worked hard. Whatever I could clean or do, and I only got $2.00 a day and I worked hard. I had five children and to be honest with you, I never left then to be minded. I didn't go to Labrador, but my sister Susie did and had to look after 14 men for $17.00 the whole summer. She worked hard, too.

The house I grew up in was a two-story house. A big house. It had four bedrooms upstairs. A big front room, and a big hall. We had a big house. When I was 12 years old, we built a new one down in the marsh in Burnt woods. We had to lug all the water and our mother used to wait on top of Slade's Hill and watch us lug the water up over the hill. We had one of the first radios to come in Victoria.

The chores that we did were like we'd bring in wood. See, mom grew her own vegetables. We never bought any vegetables. Whatever we used, mom grew. When she would set the vegetables, we all had to chip in and help. Then in the fall of the year, when she would be taking them up, it would be the same way. Mom would get up in the morning and dig up the potatoes and we'd come home and pick them up. Besides potatoes, she also grew carrots, onions, pumpkins, cabbage, turnip, and green peas. The only animals we had were a horse, and some hunting dogs for going in the woods shooting partridges.

Growing up, we had no games to play in the house like children get today. We played outdoor games like hopscotch, skipping rope hide and go seek.

The only music played then was the accordion. The church was the most important part in our life because we were a religious family. There was also the Lodge. Mom and dad were part of the Lodge, but after they became Christians, they gave the Lodge up.

There were garden parties, but we never asked to go to places like that because we knew we wouldn't be allowed to go to things like that.

As regards to Christmas, I suppose it wasn't a big lot of difference. We always put Christ first in Christmas. Mom would hang up our stocking, but we weren't taught that someone came down the chimney and stuff like that. We had our Christmas tree, but like I said, Christ came first in Christmas and what it stood for.

The school had a potbelly stove and we'd go down in the morning and we had to take turns bringing a junk of wood and splits and lighting the fire. We would wait for hours for that to warm up.

I went to the old school down on the Neck. There were six grades in it from Primer to Grade 6. When we finished our Grade 6, we had to come up to the other school up here.

Recess time we would go down in the pond behind the school and we would be late coming back – and I'll tell you, we knew we were late. One time I had bladders (blisters) on my wrists. Some of the teachers were abusive. There was one teacher we had down there, he glorified in beating the legs off you. He'd stand you up and he'd get the two naked legs and come across the backs of your legs.

For the way we come up and the way we had to go to school, I was pretty bright. My first cousin would come in first and I'd come in second, or I'd come in first and he'd come in second. I was 14 years old when I passed grades 8 and 9 together in one year. But in grade 10 we had to give it up because I had to work.

Sometimes there were 25 or 30 to a class maybe more. We used a slate and a bottle of water and a bit of cloth that we would used every now and then to wipe it off with first when I went to school. Sometimes if we didn't have water, we'd spit on it. Then after a while, we got scribblers. When I got married they had night classes down here with Mr. Caravan. So I went back to school.

The only transportation we used was a horse and buggy or a cart or a slide. Our brother would sometimes take us to school on the horse.

We had one doctor, Dr. Stanford, in Carbonear and he had to do Victoria, Freshwater and Salmon Cove. He had to do all of that on a horse and slide. At the age of 12, I was in bed for 6 months with fluid on my lungs and he was my doctor. Three parts of the time he had to wait for his money ‘cause we never had the money to give him. I've known mom to give him a sack of potatoes or vegetables to pay him.

The majority of the women had their babies at home. Mom had eleven children without the doctor. There were midwives back there. There were other people who would have to go around the bay on a horse and slide. You would have to go visit the doctor or the doctor would have to come in on a horse and slide.

We had our own remedies. Some home remedies included strong tea, senna tea, Epsom salt, sulphur salve for sores, burn flour on the stove to use on the baby's bum.

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The Victoria Community Development Corporation Nina Curnew

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Special Memories

The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Nina Curnew